Some of the biggest challenges during large plant outages are to manage the multitude of resources and maintain a high level of situation awareness to ensure the continued safety of plant personnel and to ensure that equipment is protected. Some nuclear utilities have refined the outage process to a fine art, but all struggle with the need to manage the complex communication processes during outages. Multimedia and wireless communication technologies are already proving to be an indispensable boon to outage teams and this is likely to become a standard feature of outage management in future. In particular, the need for collaboration and information sharing is satisfied by a range of information displays in the outage control centre. Large interactive displays (called ‘smart boards’) and collaborative work support systems allow real­time access to information, schematics, procedures, and all kinds of scheduling and resource information. This is augmented by a variety of handheld information and communication devices like tablets, smartphones, handheld computers, barcode readers and cameras.

Advanced HSIs and communication devices will also help to eliminate or reduce distractions in the control room caused by maintenance personnel traffic, noise, nuisance alarms and non-critical activities, while helping the operators to maintain situation awareness. For the maintenance teams, technologies mentioned above will help to minimize down time, and improve communication and resource management.